Portable shipping container sauna visited throughout the interweb.

The Sauna Box.

This is an authentic sauna, wood burning, cedar tongue and groove, and an outdoor shower, built within a shipping container.

The Sauna box was developed by Caster, a Canadian design firm. They are selling it through the NYC retailer Matter for $41,000. but when?

Right now, the interweb is talking about the shipping container sauna.

Within the past week, Chris, the fellow impassioned sauna blogger at SaunaScape describes: “Their sauna is built into a custom 8 x 8 x 8 foot (244 cm) shipping container. Inside is a sauna made from western red cedar and a wood fired stove. A solar panel on the roof powers a sound system that can play tunes from your iPod or your electric guitar. Thoughtful details like an antler door handle, a magnetic truck light and a wool toque are included.”

Andrew Liszewski from Gizmodo, one of our favorite review blogs, observes that the sauna is “the ultimate stress toy”.

Aaron at Uncrate, another one of our favorite review blogs, explains how the sauna is “designed to be completely self-sufficient, with solar panels providing the power and a wood-burning stove. Features include a red cedar interior, integrated iPod stereo, electric guitar hookup, Castor stool, a magnetic truck light, and bronze antlers.”

There’s Hi Consumption, Designboom, Topsy, Coolthings, Dreamybalcony, Tech-critics, MyCoolBin, Urbandaddy, mattermatters, and a dozen or so more interweb media sharing information about the portable shipping container sauna. Did this recent action seed from Inhabitat’s post 6 days prior? Saunasessions shows an amazingly well cataloged fleet of mobile saunas from around the world. They posted the shipping container sauna Box back in May 2011.

But wait. It appears that the Sauna Box was built over 8 years ago.

Mocoloco introduces us to Castor Canadensis -“a collective of craftsmen and artists with eclectic backgrounds – Kelvin Goddard (designer, metal smith), Brian Richer (stonecarver), and Ryan Taylor (photographer, designer), and shows us the Sauna Box on November 30, 2005. So, where is the Sauna Box, and how did it become this viral 8 years later? It’s not a cat video for crying out loud! For those still reading, we have put out a sauna APB and hope to report more. This writer, at least, finds it fascinating.

“Honey, there’s some nut on the phone looking for that crate sauna I made you get rid of 8 years ago.”

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. But what about free relevant information?

A fun, creative idea, product, or thought can never be reported too widely. This is a beautiful thing. The image of taking a common element (a shipping container) and merging it with something relaxing and therapeutic (an authentic Finnish sauna) provokes an immediate response. Especially now, 8 years later. Someone recently (re)started the shipping container sauna engine. Who was it? Does it matter? The difference? Today, our readers are folks thumbing down screens on their smart phones, seeing the picture, looking up, and smiling:

“hmmm.. that’s cool, I get it.”

Comments

It’s pretty, for sure, but so impractical. Like, wildly impractical. First off, no one makes 8 x 8 shipping containers, so I can’t imagine how much it costs to have someone create that custom. Second, it’s not going to breath very well at all, and sauna need to dry out between uses. Third, the weight? Good god man. It’s cute and I guess, that what rich, NYC peeps care about. Even if they knew they could build one for a tenth of the cost they probably wouldn’t have the skills or interest to do it anyway. Hey, at least it’s wood burning!

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